


Confession

by taemin



Series: Moth to a Flame AU [1]
Category: EXO (Band), SHINee, SuperM (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Classical Music, Blasphemy, I'm serious about the sacrilege, M/M, Professional Musicians, Queer Themes, Sacrament as foreplay, queer catholicism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:20:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23647588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taemin/pseuds/taemin
Summary: "Bless me father, for I have sinned. It's been… a very long time since my last confession."
Relationships: Kim Jongin | Kai/Lee Taemin
Series: Moth to a Flame AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1702462
Comments: 11
Kudos: 105





	Confession

**Author's Note:**

> For Nastia.

Jongin arrives backstage during the woodwind sectional for _Scheherazade_. Truly, he’d gone wandering with no specific destination and just found himself here, needing to stretch his legs and breathe in some fresh air after spending the morning sitting between dusty stacks of old, brittling scores back in the cluttered music library. He’ll be working through the catalogue for months. It seems as though the precarious organizational system adopted by the previous librarian, the capricious "stack things on other things" approach, has finally caught up to them. Taemin’s office—formerly Maestro Sooman’s—looks even worse. It can't continue. At least, Jongin thinks, having something to occupy his time will keep him working for Taemin longer.

Taemin’s leaning back now, letting the flautist work through her runs during the third movement. He rarely bothers keeping time during sectionals, insisting that each member of the orchestra feel the pulse in the air that cocoons them. "You don’t need me. It’s here. It’s around you," he says. And then, his mouth a stern line: "Do it again."

Jongin glances at his watch. Less than a minute left of rehearsal. Some internal mechanism of Taemin’s seems to sense the hour without a timepiece, as he calls out without prompting: "That’s all for today. Thank you."

He remains on the podium as the players pack up and shuffle out. "Ace?" he calls after a moment in the direction of where Jongin’s waiting in the wings. Jongin steps out into the cozy glow of the stage lights and Taemin beams at the sight of him. "Ah. I knew you were there."

Jongin’s neck feels warm. This is the most public their flirtation has ever been—there are witnesses to this moment between them, the stragglers, the double reeds out in the audience, still disassembling their instruments and slotting the pieces neatly into their open cases.

"A lucky guess," Jongin says. "I'm always nearby."

"No, I knew. I felt you there," Taemin insists. "Are you finished in the library for today? I'd like to take you somewhere."

No. There's always more work to be done. "Where?" Jongin asks.

"Follow me."

...

The last place Jongin expects to end up on a Tuesday afternoon is the Catholic church around the corner from the Civic Center, SSO's rehearsal space and de facto home. "It's beautiful," Taemin says reverently, eyes trained on the spires stretched high above them into the grey overhang of rainclouds.

Neither of them thought to bring an umbrella. It's cold, naturally. The September chill easily knifes through Jongin's shirt, offering so little protection he may as well not be wearing one at all. Taemin stands under the lip of shingles protecting the heavy, wooden double-doors at the front of the church, and taps out a cigarette from the pack in his zip-up hoodie.

"You always dress so nicely," Taemin says after the cigarette's been lit. The smoke curls from his nostrils. He looks magical like this, more like a spirit than a boy—a man, twenty-something and already king of the world. "Is it for me?" he asks, and there's a flicker of teasing in the curve of his lips—a smirk, perhaps, although Jongin catches it in his peripheral vision and can't be sure.

Jongin lets the question hang in the air. He's still not sure how to differentiate between the times Taemin's thinking out loud and the times Taemin wants an answer, but when no prodding follows, he figures it's safe to leave it alone, especially when the honest answer is something along the lines of, _it'd be nicer if you undressed me instead._

Taemin takes a final drag from the cigarette and pinches the end off with a practiced twist of his fingers, then pockets the filter. "Come," he says, and holds Jongin's hand.

The church smells damp from the rain outside, stone and wood and incense, the smell of brittling old hymnals and worn carpet. Taemin lights a candle for St. Cecilia and stands motionless for a moment, hands clasped together against his chest. He crosses himself with his natural conductor's fluidity, the downbeat, then up to his chin, across his chest, amen. 

Jongin stands back, a little mystified by Taemin's solemn display of respect when minutes before, he'd been bright and flirting, tickling Jongin's palm with his fingertips to provoke a laugh.

It's not that Jongin’s unfamiliar with churches. He grew up going to church, sandwiched between his two older sisters who kept him occupied by giving him the hymnal to read until he had it learned by heart. He's always got more work than he can handle every Christmas and Easter, and weddings, too. But he hasn't set foot in one without his eyes averted and an instrument strapped to his back for nearly a decade now. Church represents a lot of complicated pain he doesn't talk about much, not even to Seulgi, remembering the slow-motion panic attack of staying in the closet until graduation, when he fled to America, to Boston, to NEC, and stopped speaking to anyone from back home in the process. He never told them. He's never been this version of himself in this place before. Being here with Taemin forces all of those strange, exhilarated, heartbroken feelings to the surface.

"I want to do the Saint-Saëns in the spring. The Organ Symphony," Taemin says abruptly, opening his arms in a wide embrace of the empty room. Having something to focus on, a thread of a conversation, helps bring Jongin back to the present.

"Okay," he says, fumbling into his pocket with cold, damp fingers. His phone screen won't register or unlock.

"You'll remember," Taemin says, waving him off. "Have you played it?"

Jongin slips his phone back in his pocket and shakes his head once. "I haven't."

"But you've heard it."

"I mean, recordings, yes—"

"No, no. It's not the same as the experience of a live performance. When the organ comes in and your bones rattle and the hair stands up on the back of your neck—there's nothing like it." He touches Jongin then, a hand resting on his hip, so comfortable and practiced for such an intimate gesture. "Well. Some things come close, maybe."

"Oh?" Jongin says, body flushing hot. He turns to Taemin and finds him staring back with a smirk, not even pretending to be coy about what he means. Taemin's flirting is so terribly blunt, but perhaps that's what makes him so irresistible to Jongin. He knows exactly what he wants and isn't apologetic when asking for it.

"As we both know very well by now."

 _Fuck._ Jongin struggles to maintain his composure when he's so immediately turned on that every cell in his body feels like it's vibrating at the wrong frequency. Taemin notices and inches closer, practically standing in between Jongin's legs now.

"I wanted to bring you here because this was where I fell in love with music," Taemin tells Jongin, winding Jongin's tie around his wrist to draw him nearer still. "That sacred, profound feeling in here? The way the air feels heavy and beautiful? Ecstasy. It should feel like this in any room you play."

"Thank you," Jongin murmurs, dizzy with proximity. He thinks about the progression of his life up to this very moment, hyper-fixated on the slip of wood under his damp fingertips as he catches his balance against the pew behind him, the smell of candle smoke and petrichor, then Taemin's face cradled in his hands like something precious. He's hurtling towards something new, and he couldn't stop even if he wanted to. Some things are inevitable. This, _them_ —they are inevitable. 

Taemin kisses him then, right in front of God, like he's not even a little bit ashamed of himself. Jongin is both lost and found.

...

Taemin slams the door to his office closed behind them upon their return, locks it, and immediately crowds Jongin up against the Yamaha baby grand that takes up most of the floor space in the office. Stacks of music, mostly things Jongin had organized earlier, scatter as Jongin's elbows catch against the lid. Taemin presses on, undeterred, his eyes fiery and bright.

"Bless me father, for I have sinned. It's been… a very long time since my last confession."

Jongin laughs softly and rakes Taemin's damp hair back from his forehead. "May God the Father of all mercies help you make a good Confession," he whispers, a little rusty, but it's muscle memory, the cadence of those words in his brain like a melody.

Taemin's eyes light up, pleased that Jongin's choosing to play along. He presses their mouths together again, briefly, and then draws back a few millimeters to whisper against Jongin's lips: "I confess, I think about us together often." He grins, pleased with himself and his cleverness, which inevitably and often plunges into perversion. "I want you."

"You can have me," Jongin breathes. Taemin kisses him, untucking his crisp shirt, mussing it, hands wandering up his bare chest to settle on his nipples. Jongin shivers, feeling like a lit firework under his skin, his head tipping back against the screen. 

"You shouldn't —" he starts, and then moans quietly when Taemin presses his clothed erection against Jongin's, finding him similarly eager. His hand finds the back of Jongin's neck as a balance point and Jongin mirrors him, rolling his body, grinding his hips up, and up, and down, and down, shivering when Taemin thumbs at his nipple with insistent, worrying little strokes. 

"I confess," Taemin begins again, his face pressed into the side of Jongin's neck, whispering into his skin, "I can't stop thinking about this. About fucking you. Making music and fucking you. It's all I want to do, every day. It's distracting. You distract me."

 _You have to stop talking like that or I'm going to combust,_ Jongin thinks, cannot say. He opens his mouth to speak but a broken sound comes out instead, and Taemin kisses him quiet.

"What about you? Do you have anything you'd like to confess?"

"You want—a confession—from me?" It's hard to speak. Jongin's winded like he just sprinted a mile.

Taemin smiles and strokes Jongin's nipple again with the side of his thumb, coaxing him to react. The featherlight teasing makes Jongin dizzy, his whole body throbbing, every heartbeat a staccato timpani strike. "Something you've never told anyone else," Taemin murmurs, rolling his body into Jongin's again. His thumb never stops, and Jongin feels his dick pulse wet in his pants. He could come like this, _just_ like this. He's so close, teetering on the edge, holding himself back through a white-knuckled sheer force of will. It's already going on his list of fantasies to relive privately later, at home, taking matters into his own hands under the covers when he gets some time alone again. 

Jongin doesn't know what he could possibly say. He's known Taemin a month and Taemin already knows all of his deepest secrets. He has nothing to confess, nothing to hide. He is wide open. He closes his eyes and whimpers. "I want you too," he says on a ragged exhale. He inhales deeply, trying to calm down, but Taemin has other plans. He redirects his hands to the buckle of Jongin's belt, then, having conquered that obstacle, the button of Jongin's trousers. Jongin's having an out-of-body experience and fades in and out of awareness, so it takes him a moment to realize Taemin's humming the Saint-Saëns while he fiddles with the zipper at his fly.

"I want to fuck you," Taemin says, and rubs the clothed head of Jongin's dick, right at the damp spot in his underwear. "Can I?"

"Please. Yes."

The sequence of events is hard to follow after this in Jongin's memory, hazy and disjointed like the story in a dream. He remembers the hard press of wood into his elbows when Taemin nudges him down and over, and then the hot kiss of Taemin's clothed cock up the seam of his ass as he grinds up on Jongin. Jongin's knees are jellied and buckling under the weight of Taemin's body, pasted together with sweat, holding himself upright through sheer force of will, both forearms braced against the piano, leaving sweat streaks across its glossy black finish. Unbelievable, he is hallucinating, he's living his worst nightmare and having a wet dream in public, except Taemin is so warm and so real and he keeps whispering, "Don't come yet, don't come until I'm inside you, need it, need you." 

Taemin doesn't, however, move to make that a reality. Instead, he stays crouched between Jongin's legs by the piano stool, Jongin's leg hooked over Taemin's elbow as Jongin leans back for balance. Taemin's fingers are skillful—Jongin knows that, he's heard him play—but it applies to other things, too. Like the two fingers currently up his ass, accompanied by a soft pair of plush lips sucking and mouthing at his cock to ease the sting of intrusion. He seems perfectly content to stay there all day and focus on Jongin.

"Taemin?" With the introduction of the third finger, Jongin's finding it difficult to breathe, much less concentrate. He's drenched with sweat, tilting his hips towards Taemin's crooked hand, searching for more, harder. "You're going to get tendonitis like that," he wheezes, and Taemin laughs but strokes something deep inside him with the pads of his fingers and Jongin turns to vapor and speech leaves him again. Taemin is a star with everything he tries to do, but this—"Oh, god," Jongin chokes out—might be his greatest talent.

"Shh, shh," Taemin whispers, eyes bright and mischievous. He withdraws his hand and strokes Jongin's thighs to calm him down. "Don't get us caught, I'm not done with you yet." 

Jongin doesn't know how much more teasing he can take. Taemin's brought him to the edge twice now with no indication of surrender. Jongin is going to die tonight. And suddenly Taemin laughs, which means Jongin must have said that last part out loud.

"This is why you rush when you play. You're impatient," Taemin says. He rises to his feet and kicks out of his jeans. He's not wearing underwear—he never does, and Jongin _knows_ this about him now, that's how many times they've slept together. He crosses to the loveseat and tosses another pile of scores to the floor. They scatter everywhere, and Jongin winces. A whole day's work gone. But Taemin's tunnel vision barely notices the mess. 

Instead, Taemin slumps down on the couch and gestures for Jongin to climb in his lap. Jongin manages, one foot on the floor for balance, the other knee jammed into the space between the cushions. His limbs feel gangly and awkward, trying to crouch in Taemin's lap on a lizard green velvet loveseat, a frantic coupling that can't wait until later. And then Taemin's finally inside, sliding home, pulling at Jongin's hips to bring him forward for a kiss, and then a second and third. When Jongin sits back, there's a leather cord of rosary beads looped around both of his wrists, forcing him to put his arms around Taemin's neck.

Taemin smiles up at him, eyelids heavy. "Penance."

"Jesus Christ," Jongin says.

"That isn't my name." He puts his mouth on Jongin's nipple this time, the flat of his tongue, then his teeth. 

"Taemin. Ah—fuck, Taemin."

"God, you're so sensitive. It's beautiful to watch you," Taemin says, sounding as awestruck and inspired as he ever does when he's discussing music. He touches again, provoking a full-body shudder, and then grins, pleased. Jongin feels beautiful. Jongin is beautiful.

They fuck for a while, the couch creaking ominously underneath them every time their bodies collide. They are going to get caught someday. Maybe today, maybe exactly like this. Taemin is chaotic, and now Jongin is, too, but he needs this, needs Taemin.

“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good,” Taemin says, and the smirk on his face is more devilish than priestly. He hadn't forgotten about their roleplaying game, but Jongin had.

“His mercy endures forever," Jongin chokes out, feeling weirdly caught between being out-of-control horny and suddenly deeply ashamed.

"Remember. God is love, Jongin," Taemin says with a swivel of his hips, like he can hear all of Jongin's panicked thoughts about blasphemy and damnation. A lone bead of sweat travels down the apex of his nose and hangs precariously at the tip until he nuzzles at Jongin's throat and it disappears, lost, commingling with the rivulets of Jongin's own sweat collecting at the divot of his throat. "This is how to glorify him, making love."

"This is worship to you? Oh, fuck," Jongin breaks off, moaning, the rosary jangling loosely around his wrists where Taemin had wound it. His body responds to Taemin with an involuntary immediacy, nerves sparking electric like an ungrounded wire. 

"Now you're getting it," Taemin says, and the next thrust goes so deep that it takes Taemin's composure away momentarily. He swears quietly and bucks against Jongin, baring his teeth in a pained grimace against Jongin's shoulder. It doesn't break the skin, but Jongin already feels the bruise forming under where Taemin's mouth had been. He comes but his rhythm barely falters, still fucking Jongin with a deep, easy rubato.

"When I get more time with you in my bed, I'm going to put my mouth on every inch of you. Need you, want it. Going to make you feel so good."

They haven't even finished this fuck yet and he's already planning on a next time. Jongin nearly cries when he comes, the relief so overwhelming, so _good_. Every cell in his body is tingling. He slumps over Taemin's chest, listening to the reassuring tick of Taemin's heartbeat, and feels that ecstasy Taemin was talking about earlier. Maybe he does cry. A few tears, barely distinguishable from the sweat. Taemin strokes his hair and starts humming again, back on the Saint-Saëns, right where he'd left off earlier.

Forever after today, Jongin will be unable to think of church and God and salvation without associating Taemin along with those things. The heat generated between them, two bodies folded together in prayer. The post-orgasm euphoria feels like an answer to the question his body has been asking. 

Taemin is the apple.

Taemin is also the snake.

…

Jongin's so exhausted he naps when he gets home and wakes up after midnight with a dry mouth and an empty stomach. The kitchen light's still on, so Seulgi's still awake too, probably editing another video. He adjusts the hood of his sweatshirt to hide Taemin's teeth marks just below his earlobe, a shadow of their dalliance, proof he'd been there, more outwardly obvious than the pleasant ache inside Jongin. He can still feel Taemin inside of him even hours later as he walks, delicately, to the fridge for some water. His thighs burn, too.

"He's working you hard, isn't he?" Seulgi asks slyly, and Jongin blushes.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a snapshot of a larger au that, at the moment, exists mostly in my head and Evernote. Triple threat wunderkind composer-conductor-pianist Lee Taemin takes over the podium at the Seoul Symphony Orchestra and hires Kim Jongin as his assistant. Seulgi and Jongin are roommates. Inspired by Mozart In The Jungle, among other things. This AU will be written in one-shots, out of order.
> 
> I don't know what else to say. Happy Easter, everybody! And don't come for me on the blasphemy thing.


End file.
